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organized crime

organized crime

72 3.4
Illegal acts by groups that plan and work together to make money
  • noun
  • /ˈɔrɡəˌnaɪzd kraɪm/
  • NSFW
translation icon : crimen organizado
  • The police launched a major operation to dismantle organized crime in the city.
  • trafficking by organized crime
  • organized crime and corruption
  • drug-related organized crime

Where does the the conjoining of organized crime and politics sit exactly?

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Examples

  • According to some estimates, human trafficking is the fastest growing area of organized crime (United Nations, 2002).

    Academic text (2008)
  • With the increase of legal gambling in Europe, some organized crime groups buy companies in this field.

    Academic text (2007)
  • The government of the United States... has a secret policy with organized crime.

  • So they were focused on serious and organised crime in the UK.

  • There are two main competing views of organized crime and drug markets.

    Academic text (2007)
  • A lot of the funding of terrorist groups is now done through organised crime networks.

  • Unfortunately, the Boston field office was more used to investigating organized crime and bank fraud than rocks.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • Some relatives believe that my father gambled at clubs that were owned by organized crime families.

    Fiction book (1990)
  • Police investigators still suspected the perpetrators came from the field of organized crime.

  • The structures, operations, objectives, and timing of organized crime are different from those of political subversion.

    Academic text (2003)

How Organized

organized crime
  • NSFW
72 3.4
gang
832 2.8
petty larceny
  • Formal
3 6.9

Surface Forms

Morphology

organized + crime

The meaning is directly compositional: 'organized' (systematically structured) modifies 'crime' (unlawful acts), so a learner who knows both words can infer criminal activity carried out in a structured or coordinated way. This adjective+noun pattern is common across languages and follows ordinary semantic combination, making the phrase immediately understandable to B1 learners.

Etymology

Organized crime comes from the image of criminals acting like a business: organized teams working together to do crime in a planned way. So it now means 'criminal groups that work together to do illegal activities'.